he short answer is easy: Have a quality product or service, sell it at a reasonable price, clearly communicate what you have to offer, provide excellent customer service — and marketing, marketing, marketing.

The marketing funnel helps you tailor your content to your customer’s journey. In this instance, “content” means several different things — all put together like puzzle pieces that fit to make a cohesive whole. The “whole” is your message. The “pieces” (or content) include the type of marketing tactic (AKA tool, platform, medium) used. These can be a website, a social media post, an email campaign, and so forth. Other pieces of “content” include words and design elements.

An industry-standard B2B marketing funnel looks similar to a sales funnel. However, just as customers face different goals or problems at different points in their user journey, so must your content have different goals at each stage in the funnel.

 

What Kind of Marketing Does Your Company Need?

The answer for you depends on your short and long term business goals, your company’s current position in the market, as well as who your target audience is.

When it comes to advertising, however, it’s usually recommended to strike a balance between lead generation ads and brand awareness ads, as they are the two most important pillars of a campaign.

If you’re a new or new-ish company, a sleek, user-friendly website that clearly communicates who you are, what you do, and why consumers should choose you is Priority One. After that, awareness campaigns are crucial to introduce your product and lodge your brand in your audience’s mind. These are visual campaigns that include graphics, animations, and videos that run as social media ads, Google Display ads, and video ads.

Nine Marketing Tasks to Get You Started

1. Develop a content marketing strategy that engages your audience and drives conversions.
2. Use targeted social media platforms to increase brand visibility and interact with potential customers.
3. Improving your website’s search engine optimization to attract organic traffic and boost search engine rankings.
4. Create effective email campaigns that keep your audience engaged and drive sales.
5. Identify and collaborate with local co-brands to expand your reach and build credibility with your target audience.
6. Use Google Analytics to track and analyze your website traffic and marketing campaigns.
7. Design and optimize landing pages that capture leads and drive conversions.
8. Create compelling video content and leverage video marketing to engage customers and promote your products.
9. Run a cost-effective PPC campaign on platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads to maximize your ROI.

This list of nine tasks provides a brief overview of various digital marketing tactics that can help businesses build brand awareness, generate leads, and convert sales.

 

Marketing Metrics and How to Make Them Work for You

In the past, the sales funnel was a straightforward process that started with marketing and ended with the customer’s purchase. Today, that model has been replaced with a more dynamic model that requires adaptive marketing as consumer trends, digital platforms, and the economic landscape shift.

Now, there’s every opportunity to try new approaches, expand to new channels, and A/B test your tactics. But you won’t know how a tactic is working until you begin monitoring the results. Pay attention to what the analytics tell you, and use the additional information to continue optimizing your marketing strategy.

To evaluate your current marketing campaign, ask the following questions:

• Are we meeting our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)?
• Are campaigns working as intended?
• Which campaigns are the most successful? Why?
• Which campaigns aren’t working as we hoped? Why?
• What did we learn from the most successful campaigns?
• How can we improve less successful campaigns?

With your evaluations complete, it’s time to take action. Take the opportunity to boost or extend your successful campaigns. For less effective campaigns, decide whether to pause or hit “start over.” You can use your newfound knowledge to improve the tactic or refocus your budget on what’s already working.

The key to adaptive marketing is acting based on the metrics you gather — whether it’s optimizing a campaign or pivoting to an entirely new direction.

What Now? Hire an Experienced Professional Agency.

Liquid Creative can do all nine of the tasks we mentioned — and more!

with services ranging from branding to social media management . . . and everything in between.

Some of the services we provide include:

• Branding & Logo Design
• Website Design, Development, Refresh
• Digital Advertising
• Social Media Management
• SEO, Online Ranking, Local Search
• Copywriting & Graphic Design
• Photography and Video Production

At Liquid Creative, we are an inhouse team of Operations Managers, Account Managers, Strategists, Writers, Designers, and more — all working together to bring your ideas to life.

If you need marketing assistance to boost your brand and sales, Liquid Creative can help. Contact us today to plan next steps and make the magic happen!

 

Marketing is all about sharing the right message to the right audience at the right time. With sophisticated audience algorithms and more tools than traditional advertising, digital advertising gives you more tools than ever before to do just that. Google, Facebook, and other digital ads have plenty of options for defining your target audience and controlling where your ads are seen.

Being specific about who sees your ads and where is an increasingly important step in making the most of your digital ad campaigns. Where your ads don’t appear is just as important as where they do. Including negative keywords, excluding websites, and choosing content exclusions can safeguard your brand image while making your digital ads more effective.

Why Does Narrowing Your Digital Ad Placements Matter?

In short, showing your ads to the people who are most likely to click on them optimizes your digital ad spend.

The price of digital ads is usually measured in cost-per-click, or CPC. The CPC of your ad is determined by taking your total budget and dividing it by the number of users who clicked your ad.

When you specify your audience and ad placements, you improve the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it. This encourages Google, Facebook, and other digital ad platforms to promote your ad by proving it’s valuable and interesting. The end result is an efficient ad spend that earns you more quality leads.

 

Don’t show your ad in searches for unrelated keywords

When advertising on search engines such as Google and Bing, you may end up paying to appear next to keywords that don’t relate to your business. For example, if you owned a house painting business, you may unintentionally appear in a search for “Painting classes at home”.

Whenever that happens, your campaign becomes less effective. It’s best to avoid it altogether by specifying negative keywords.

What Are Negative Keywords?

A keyword is a search term that you’d like your ad to appear on. A negative keyword is just the opposite – a search term you never want your ads to be associated with.
In the example above, “painting” and “home” would be great keywords to use for a house painter. Using the negative keywords “classes” and “class” would clear up any confusion. Since it’s highly unlikely someone searching for those terms would click your ads, excluding them makes your ad campaign more efficient.

How to check for negative keywords

Even Though you can foresee some negative keywords and add them to your campaign from the start, it’s highly unlikely that someone can think of all the unrelated keywords a person could use next to your keywords.
Once your search campaigns are running, constantly monitor the actual search terms people use that triggered your ad to show up. Here you can find all the unrelated keywords and start adding them to the negative keywords list.

 

Don’t show your ad next to questionable content

To maintain your brand image, it’s important to ensure that your ads don’t appear next to questionable content. This may include mature content, adult language, controversial videos, political opinion pieces, and more.

Excluding this content from your ad placements can help you maintain professionalism and avoid unintentional associations with negative messaging.

What Are Content Exclusions?

Google and Facebook allow you to choose what content you don’t want your ads to appear next to. On Google, there are three main categories of content exclusions:

• Digital content labels: This acts as a rating system, from general audiences to mature audiences. Choose which sections of the scale you don’t want associated with your brand. It’s often safest to exclude the most mature category, DL-MA, and content that hasn’t yet been labeled.
• Sensitive content: Most of the sensitive content labels are beneficial to avoid. These include topics such as profanity, tragedy, and controversial social issues.
• Content type: You can also choose not to have your ads placed within videos, in YouTube live streams, in games, and more. These are a bit more up to debate, so take the time to review what’s best for your type of business.

Facebook calls their version Content Type Exclusions. You can choose topics such as religious & spiritual, gaming, politics, and news to exclude from your ad placements. In addition, you have the option to remove your ads from live streams, where content is more difficult to monitor and rate.

 

Don’t show your ads in low quality placements

Your Google Ads, mostly display ads, show up in Google’s Display Network (GDN). This network includes websites, apps, YouTube channels and more, which are called placements. But not all placements are created equal. They range from highly regarded news channels to low quality websites.

We mentioned that you can create content exclusion. For example, you don’t want your ads to show up on kids or gaming YouTube channels. But content exclusion is not perfect and your ad could still show up in placements that you don’t desire.

How to check for low quality placements

Similar to checking for negative keywords, you can check for places your ads appeared in the “where ads showed” Google Ads tab. If you don’t like one of these placements, select them and ask Google Ads to exclude them from your campaign.

 

Don’t show your ads to certain audiences

Defining your target audience is a huge step in setting up strategic digital ads. It’s helpful to target your ads based on location, age, interests, and more to make sure your ads are reaching the right people. This step should also include choosing what audiences you don’t want to see your ads.

Targeting just the right people can improve your cost-per-click and overall results. Experimenting with ad audience exclusions is a great way to make sure you aren’t spending money advertising to current customers or incompatible audiences.

What Are Ad Audience Exclusions?

Both Google and Facebook have options for removing audience members based on certain characteristics.

• Current customers: Based on your ad content and objective, advertising to current customers may not suit your goals. For example, brand awareness ads are better served to audiences who haven’t visited your website before.
• Current employees: Your employees are already aware and interested in your business, so it’s best to exclude them from your audience.
• Conflicting interests: By excluding users with certain interests from your audience, you can reduce negative feedback and better optimize your ad spend. For example, a local thrift store may choose not to target audiences interested in luxury brands when advertising a sale. Finding a conflicting interest may take some creative thinking, but this step can really narrow your ad audience!
• Users who have interacted with your brand: If someone has messaged, liked, followers, or otherwise interacted with your account, they’re likely already aware of your brand. Excluding these people, as well as users who may appear in remarketing audiences, can assist with brand awareness objectives.

 

Looking To Learn More About Digital Marketing?

Liquid Creative has guided many businesses through successful Facebook, Google, and Instagram ad campaigns. With experience with local to national brands, we bring strategy and amazing creative work to every one of our clients.

If you’re a small business owner looking to learn about conducting your own digital marketing campaigns, check out Liquid GROW! This is a new digital marketing course to teach you the basics of Google, Facebook, and other digital ads. If you’d prefer a full-service marketing partner to run your digital marketing from strategy to results, contact us today!

In today’s digital landscape, video marketing has become essential to business marketing strategy. With the rise of social media and the increasing popularity of online video platforms like YouTube and TikTok, video has become one of the most effective ways to engage with customers and build brand awareness.

In this blog post, we explain why businesses should invest in marketing videos, the different kinds of marketing videos and how they can be used, and how to create effective marketing videos. We’ll also offer some cool examples for you to check out.

 

What Is Video Marketing?

Generally speaking, “video marketing” is pretty self-explanatory, right? You use videos to promote and market your brand, products, and/or services. Specifically, this can include anything from product demos and customer testimonials to explainer videos and behind-the-scenes footage of a project. The goal of video marketing is to engage and educate your audience, build brand awareness, and ultimately drive sales.

 

Why Your Business Should Invest in Marketing Videos

There are many compelling reasons why businesses should invest in marketing videos. According to different studies ^{1, 2, 3} on both consumers and video marketers, some benefits of video marketing are:

• Improve Brand Awareness: 95% of marketers say marketing videos help them increase brand awareness
• Influences Buying decisions: 89% of people say watching a video has convinced them to buy a product or service, and they say it’s the #1 way they discover a brand they later buy from
• Return on Investment: 92% of marketers say marketing videos got them good ROI.
• People are expecting it: 91% of people say they are expecting more online videos from the brands they follow.
• Helps with SEO: 87% of marketers say video has made users stay on their website longer, which is a good SEO indicator

 

Examples of Different Kinds of Marketing Videos

There are many different types of marketing videos businesses can create. Here are some of the most common, with links to examples you can watch for ideas:

Brand Videos

Showcase a brand’s personality, values, and mission to its target audience. Brand videos typically feature a mix of live-action footage, animation, graphics, and voice-over narration to create an emotional connection with the viewer. They help businesses establish a strong brand identity, increase brand awareness, and improve customer engagement and loyalty. Check out this brief brand video from Straight Line Construction.

Brand video for Straight Line Construction.

Customer Testimonials

Feature satisfied customers sharing their positive experiences with your product or service, which can help build trust with potential customers and encourage newbies to make a purchase.

Client testimonial and case study for Hurd Construction.

Explainer Videos & How-To Videos

Explain complex concepts or processes in a clear and concise manner. With step-by-step visuals to accompany audio or written instructions, viewers are more likely to understand exactly what you’re explaining because they can watch the demonstration. Demo videos are great to teach customers how to use your product or service, which also helps reduce customer support calls and improves customer experience.

Video tutorial for City of Newberry.

YouTube Video Ads

Short video clips that businesses can use to promote their products or services on the world’s biggest video streaming platform. Your video ads can appear before or during a regular content video and are typically skippable after a few seconds. With YouTube’s targeting options, you can reach potential customers who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.

YouTube Ad for Straight Line Construction.

Social Media Ads

Short, engaging videos can be used as ads on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. These can help increase brand awareness and user engagement, plus drive traffic to your website. Similar to YouTube ads, social media ads have very specific targeting capabilities. At Liquid, we’ve found social media ads to be very helpful.

Social media video ad for Liquid Creative.

Animated Videos

Animation is used to tell a story or convey a message. This method can make a heavy topic more palatable for the viewer to watch; it is also useful when you don’t have access to live actors. Often used to explain complex concepts, showcase a product or service, or entertain and engage an audience, one of the main benefits of animated videos is that they are highly versatile and can be used in a variety of settings, from social media to website landing pages. We created an animated video to announce the upcoming show season for the Ocala Civic Theatre, and animation was a great vehicle for the content we were showcasing.

Season reveal 22/23 for the Ocala Civic Theater.

Walkthrough Videos

Tutorials that guide viewers through a product, service, process, or even a location. They can be used to educate customers, increase product understanding and adoption, and improve customer satisfaction. Walkthrough videos can also be used to highlight product features and benefits that may not be immediately apparent in print.

Walk Through Video for Grove Street Games.

Team Intros

Short videos that introduce a business’s team members, showcasing their personalities, roles, and contributions to the company. These videos humanize a brand, build trust and credibility with customers, and create a sense of connection and community. By putting a face to the name, team members become more relatable and approachable, helping to build stronger relationships with customers.

Team Intro Video for Pat Myers Electric.
Other forms of video marketing include webinars, vlogs, behind-the-scenes footage, live streaming, and more.

But How Do I Create a Marketing Video?

We’re glad you asked. Now that you know what you need, let’s talk about how to do it.

First, it’s important to understand that video marketing goes beyond creating one-off videos. Brands should integrate video across all their platforms, all the time.

One business that does this well is Straight Line Construction (you saw several of their video examples featured above). Liquid Creative has been working for Straight Line for two years, and we are constantly creating new video content for them—brand videos, team videos, video ads, client testimonials, and social media videos. Because of the effectiveness of this holistic video campaign, we received the Grand Image Award 2022 in the marketing video category.

We know that creating an effective marketing video can be a daunting task. Some of the reasons for not starting doing video campaigns that we’ve heard from business owners include time constraints, they don’t know where to start, lack of resources, lack of expertise, fear of being on camera, or they aren’t sure if the return will be worth the investment.

But creating a video doesn’t have to be difficult. Here are some steps to ensure your video is engaging, memorable, and achieves your marketing goals:

1. Decide who is filming your video: Are you doing it in-house (with your team and resources), or are you hiring a video production agency?
2. Determine your goal: Before creating your video, it’s important to know what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase sales, improve brand awareness, or educate your audience? This will help you create a video that is focused on achieving that goal.
3. Know your audience: Understanding your target audience is key to creating a video that resonates with them. Consider their age, gender, interests, and “pain points.” Pain points include the questions they are asking, the products they need, and the problems they need to solve. Taking the time to discover this information will help you create content that speaks directly to them.
4. Craft your message: Once you know your goal and audience, it’s time to craft your message. Your message should be clear, concise, and focused on the benefits your users will receive if they choose your product or service.
5. Plan your visuals: The visuals of your video are just as important as the message. Plan out what you want your audience to see and how you want to present it. This could include graphics, animations, or live-action footage.
6. Write your script: Your script should be engaging, memorable, and short. Well, brief enough to capture and hold interest—and just long enough to cover the main idea. Most sources suggest keeping the word count around 60–75 for a 30-second video. You don’t want to speed read because you will lose key inflections and emphasis, and your audience won’t understand or remember much of what you said. According to JL Recording Studios, three words per second is an acceptable pace for video script writing. Consider using storytelling techniques to make your video more memorable. Everyone likes a good story, whether it’s funny, nostalgic, or sentimental. And it’s always smart to end with a Call-to-Action of some kind, even if it’s just to get in touch (with your contact info included).
7. Choose your music & sound effects: Music and sound effects can make or break a video. Choose music that complements your message and adds to the emotional impact of the video. If the script covers a serious subject, an upbeat, happy tune will undermine your message.
8. Test & refine: Once you’ve created your video, test it with a focus group or a small sample of your target audience. Use their feedback to refine your video and make it even more effective before you publish the video on your platforms.

By now you know that video marketing is a powerful tool to help businesses achieve their marketing goals. With engaging, memorable videos, businesses can increase brand awareness, generate more leads, and improve customer engagement. With the right strategy and tactics, any company can use video marketing to their advantage.

If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to start incorporating video into your digital marketing strategy and see (pun intended) the results for yourself. If you’re interested in working with an award-winning video production agency, be sure to contact us so we can discuss your projects.

 

1. The State of Video Marketing 2023. Wyzowl.
2. The Video Marketing Playbook. Trends & Tips to Create a Video Strategy in 2023. HubSpot.
3. Digital 2022 Global Overview Report. WeAreSocial.

Any company that wants to grow needs to take their marketing efforts seriously. Successful marketing is both comprehensive and consistent, which is why it yields desired results. In this article, we share important pros and cons of various levels of marketing services to help you determine what kind of marketing is best for your business goals.

For this article, we only consider strategic, ongoing marketing efforts. This means we won’t be addressing one-off projects that might require the hiring of a web designer or photographer. In the end, this blog can help you decide whether to hire a marketing agency, create an in-house marketing team, or utilize a hybrid model.

Partnering With a Marketing Agency

Any type of business will benefit from hiring a marketing agency, but it’s especially beneficial for small and medium businesses, who may not be positioned to hire a professional in-house team with sufficient marketing experience and expertise.

Pros of Working with a Marketing Agency

Expertise: Marketing agencies have a breadth of knowledge in multiple areas of marketing. Because of their vast knowledge and skill set, they are able to create professional campaigns with goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics. Furthermore, they are then able to plan, implement, and monitor those campaigns.

Experience:

From years of creating multiple campaigns for various clients in different industries, marketing agencies have irreplaceable practical experience in what works and what doesn’t. Therefore, agencies are better suited to anticipate problems and troubleshoot solutions (which can also save the client’s reputation, not to mention time and money).

Flexibility:

Having a multidisciplinary team with talents in different areas allows an agency to offer the marketing mix that produces nearly any deliverable and achieves any outcome . . . for any kind of company.

Scalability:

If you plan to grow your business, but you are not yet where you want to be, an agency can easily scale your marketing efforts to match your budget and then increase your campaigns when it’s the right time to do so.

Advanced Tools and Technology:

Agencies have access to specialized tools that optimize every part of your marketing campaign with no additional cost to you. These tools include everything from design software and analytic programs to state-of-the-art computers, video production, and print capabilities.

Access to Resources and Providers:

Agencies constantly work with external companies in advertising and media relations. These connections will get you better and faster deals than what you could have negotiated on your own.

 

Cons of Working with a Marketing Agency

Finding the Right Fit:

Partnering with an agency is a big commitment. It may be a hard decision to choose one over the other, and choosing the wrong agency could generate lasting problems for your brand. We recommend you take your time, do your research (ask previous clients about their experience), and make an informed decision.

Potential Conflicts of Interest:

A marketing agency you prefer might already have contracts to work with competing companies in your industry. It’s a smart and savvy legal move to address and clarify any potential conflicts upfront.

Cost Considerations:

Agencies tend to set flat rates for consistent deliverables (the same tasks done each month on a retainer) or an hourly rate for the work they do. If you want additional tasks or to make modifications to what has already been agreed upon, you will probably incur additional costs.

 

What Is an In-House Marketing Team?

An “in-house” marketing team is when a company has people on staff whose sole responsibility revolves around marketing that company, and that company alone. For example, an insurance company might have brokers, auditors, and managers, but if they have an in-house marketing team—those are employees who specialize in marketing and work to promote that insurance company and their products on a daily basis.

The ability to afford an in-house marketing team is usually reserved for big companies that have the need (an ongoing large amount of diverse marketing materials for multiple campaigns and target audiences) and budget to manage their marketing internally.

Pros of an In-House Marketing Team

An in-house team is more familiar with the brand, since their marketing efforts are 100% devoted to that company. They are often physically present at the company, spending time with the company staff, hearing the “voice” of the company everyday. Also, they tend to use the products firsthand, and never work for another company that might divide their attention.

In-house teams have the flexibility to start, stop, and change campaigns at any moment without needing to ask an outside agency for a new quote or wait for an agency’s calendar to open up—all of which results in faster delivery time.

In-house agencies are “closer to the product” and ready to market at all times. For example, they don’t have to wait for an email letting them know that Bob had delivered a great presentation at a national trade show. Why not? Because Bob knows he had provided valuable insights, generated lots of leads, and is ready to post spur-of-the-moment content—like a TikTok reel or Facebook story.

Cons of an In-House Marketing Team

Let’s go back to the example of the insurance company. While experts in their field—and super knowledgeable about all kinds of insurance policies, premiums, and coverage—does anyone on staff know enough about marketing to hire the right people for their in-house marketing team? Can they properly assess the qualities of a graphic designer, copywriter, digital marketer, video producer, web developer, or a social media manager? Chances are, most of these positions and skill sets are too far out of the insurance area of expertise that the HR department won’t be sure if they are hiring the right people for each position.

The previous point means there may be several cases of hiring the wrong people. They had a resume that said the thing, but their skill set just didn’t hit the mark. Having to fire people is expensive, difficult, and could damage employee morale.
For every person on your in-house team, you have to factor in recruiting costs, salary (wage, benefits, insurance, 401K, etc.), physical space in your company, training, hardware (computers, cameras, etc.), software licenses, and more. The costs add up—and fast.

You may need to hire new people for every new type of campaign. If you want to do something you’ve never done before, your in-house team may not have the experience or the equipment to do it properly. Hiring new people with a new skill set or buying additional hardware and software just adds more to the budget.

Hybrid Marketing Model

Given all of this information, many midsize to big companies opt for a hybrid model, where part of the marketing is done in house and part is done by partnering with a marketing agency.

Although the personnel configuration varies with each company, many businesses with the means to do so will employ a full-time marketing director with a great understanding of the brand, in depth knowledge of the company’s goals and needs, and enough knowledge to be the right liaison between the company and the outside marketing agency.

Companies also choose to have some in-house team members for specific tasks or projects that are extremely detail-oriented, time-sensitive, or require the employee to be physically on site at the company.

How to Choose the Best Marketing Option for You

Here’s a short list of things you need to consider when evaluating your options. What feels more natural and realistic for you and your business objectives? Partnering with a marketing agency or building an in-house marketing team?

For more insight on options, check out our Liquid Marketing Podcast “Generalists vs. Specialists.”

Before you decide, be sure to research the following for clear data on your company’s current health:

Overall Budget:

How much do you have available to spend on marketing?

Specific Needs:

What’s the most important thing to market right now? Do you need brand awareness, to get your name out there? Do you need a website? Maybe you need leads so you can sell products?

Agency Options:

Have you found an agency that does good work and has great communication/customer service? Do you vibe well with their team? How much do they cost?

In-House Options:

Do you have enough people on your team right now who have the right expertise to meet your marketing objectives? If not, the money spent on a marketing budget or new hires might be wasted.

If you need help choosing an option or are in the research stage for hiring an outside marketing agency, contact Liquid Creative. We’re here to answer any questions you might have—and, ultimately, help propel your brand through inspired and adaptive marketing, whatever your business, whatever your need.

What Makes Content Writing Effective? Short answer: A story that moves you.

For this blog, when we use the term “content,” we’re talking about words—in all their various deliverables and mediums. For a closer look at “content,” read our recent blog “A Handy Guide to Content Marketing.”

No matter how well your content is written, it will fall flat unless your company has already determined a brand identity and message. Your brand identity and messaging is what sets your business apart from all the other businesses that offer the same goods or services. Once you’ve firmly established your brand identity and message, all subsequent content should be written in support of that identity, sharing your distinct message with your target audience.

Successful marketing relies on storytelling. And every good story is compelling. “Compelling” content causes the audience to take some sort of action—whether it’s to feel something, buy something, or do something. Sure, you can include a formal Call-to-Action or CTA button, but the content itself should be smoothly building its way toward a culminating action that aligns with your brand and overall messaging.

There’s no official call to action or phone number to call at the end of a Nike commercial, but very few among us can watch elite athletes strive and sweat (or even ordinary folks competing) and not feel the logo on the final screen deep in our bones. What’s more compelling than Just Do It?

How to Write Compelling Content

Compelling content is clear, credible, concise, clean, cohesive, creative. The first five criteria make you sound like a professional. Number six makes you sound like nobody else.

We will now explain what each of these adjectives really means. In other words, we’re gonna be clear.

#1: CLEAR

For writing to be clear, remember your audience and know your grammar. Part of grammar involves diction, syntax, and punctuation. The goal of any writing is to communicate—and for the audience to understand you, and you can’t communicate effectively if the writing isn’t clear.

• Diction is word choice.
  Example: ” In today’s culture, you want to be mindful of word choices that could offend your audience—or anyone, for that matter. Words are powerful. Use them wisely.
• Syntax is the sentence structure.
  Example: Shopper to store clerk: “Can you please help me? I’m looking for green men’s shoes.” Unless we’re talking about Martians here, the structure of this sentence is off, which can hinder understanding. It’s the shoes that are green, not the men. Easy fix: “I’m looking for men’s shoes in green.”
• And don’t forget to give punctuation a second review as well. Punctuation is so important, it can even save lives.

 

#2: CREDIBLE

Say what you mean, and mean what you say. In a world of fake news and deep fakes, our recent blog “Building Trust: The Importance of Establishing a Positive Online Reputation for Your Business” can really help you out with this one.

In short, staying credible includes the following:

• Do your research and only use reliable sources. We like to use the CRAAP Test to analyze sources. (if it doesn’t pass the “craap test,” flush it!) DO cite your sources. This means give credit where credit is due—by naming the source when paraphrasing, using quotation marks when quoting verbatim, or embedding a hyperlink.
• Be careful using AI. Tools like ChatGPT can be great resources for research, but if you let the tool write for you, you could run into two big problems: plagiarism (the tool is culling material published on the internet and other public-access sources) and losing your (or the client’s) authentic voice.

 

#3: CONCISE

People have short attention spans. After the first impression, you have only a couple moments more to present the brand. We recommend starting with a stellar value proposition, which is marketing-speak for one or two succinct sentences that sets you apart from your competitors by stating (front and center, big and bold, on the homepage):

• Why you do what you do
• What you value or believe
• Who you do it for (AKA target audience)
• How people benefit by choosing you

Don’t say in 20 words what you can say in 10. And don’t say in 10 words what you can say in 5. If your content is redundant, pick where you’ve said it best, and cut the other instances.

CHALLENGE: Write an email. Then see if you can then reduce the word count by 20% . . . then 50%. It will get easier and easier. We promise, you can do it!

Some examples from OWL at Purdue:

• Wordy: Working as a pupil under someone who develops photos was an experience that really helped me learn a lot. (20 words)
  Concise: Working as a photo technician’s apprentice was an educational experience. (10 words)
• Wordy: Our website has made available many of the things you can use for making a decision on the best dentist. (20 words)
  Concise: Our website presents criteria for determining the best dentist. (9 words)

There’s a reason TED Talks are limited to 18 minutes. Just think of the amazing information we can learn from experts in that short time. What do you remember about Gettysburg? President Lincoln’s address, perhaps? Did you know there was another speaker there that day? Edward Everett, the invited featured speaker, talked for two hours. Lincoln’s speech contained 272 words and lasted 2 minutes. Have you ever heard of Edward Everett?

 

#4: CLEAN

Everybody makes mistakes. The key is to catch them before you publish. The best way to do that is to have multiple sets of eyes on the content, in separate review stages, on every deliverable—no matter how brief, no matter how rushed.

The person who writes the words shouldn’t be the same person who reviews them. Fresh eyes and a fresh point of view will see different things and catch errors the original writer might miss given five chances to review their own work. If your staff is small, at least allow the writer a day in between writing and reviewing, so that it’s almost like the content is being seen with fresh eyes.

When you think the content is clean and ready to go, always use a spell checker tool and one last proofread to look it all over. Spell check only catches misspellings, not words you didn’t mean to use (like “changes” instead of “chances”). This final proof isn’t the time to make revisions; it’s your final chance to catch typos.

The easiest way to differentiate between a mistake and a typo is this: Anyone who takes the time and pays attention could read through the content and find a typo. Maybe the word says “god” instead of “dog,” or the year is 1923 instead of 2023. Easy to spot, easy to fix.

Unfortunately, a mistake might not be caught by the original writer, no matter how many times they reread their own work. For example, the product they’re writing about is priced at $149.99, but the information they received from the client said $49.99. Hopefully, the client is part of the review/approval cycle before the work goes live. Typos and mistakes can both cost your company—in sales, and in reputation.

Do you think Shakespeare, arguably one of the greatest and most creative writers of all time, just sat himself down at a computer and typed out perfection on the first go? Even Shakespeare wrote, revised, wrote, edited, wrote, proofed, printed.

In the end, it’s better for your writing to be clean than fancy. All of the C’s so far have been in service of writing content that is easy for the reader to follow and understand. Point #5 has the same goal. The better a reader understands your message, the more likely they are to act on it.

 

#5: COHESIVE

Cohesive doesn’t mean redundant. It’s better to think of “cohesive” as writing where all the ideas are organized in a logical way that “flows,” or makes sense to the reader. Imagine a map. There are many paths to get to the same place, but most people want the most direct route. Nobody wants to follow a map, or a piece of writing, that goes from A to C to F to Z to D to B, when—if the writer had taken time to organize their thoughts—the reader could have quickly traveled from A to B. (Math folks know, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.)

You can also think of “cohesive” as aligned, or as individual messaging/deliverables that make sense as a whole. Studies show that users expect a unified user experience from brands, so give your users a consistent experience across all your platforms.

Since you have very little control over which platform will be a user’s first contact with your brand, make sure you’re following best practices on all of them. Two biggies are cohesive branding and consistent customer support.

Create cohesive branding on multiple platforms, and make sure the content isn’t inadvertently contradictory. Users may quickly switch from your Google Business Profile to your website to your social media channels. Is your company’s messaging the same on all of them? Staying consistent with your logo, tagline, colors, image style, content, and even the tone of your content will help the user trust your business more.

Don’t change up your branding or messaging. Design new campaigns, target new audiences, but don’t mess with your company’s messaging. Simply say it over and over and over again—in new and interesting ways, in all the places.

A word to the wise: Still be careful when designing new campaigns and targeting new audiences. There’s strategic and daring, and then there’s reckless disregard of the consumer base. The latter can cost a company billions of dollars and result in the firing of marketing VPs and mainstream portfolio group VPs.

 

#6: CREATIVE

Remember: The first five C’s make you sound like a professional. Creativity makes you sound like nobody else.

The first five are how you build trust with a client; they know they can depend on your content to accurately promote their brand and be compelling enough to generate leads. The first five are also how you build your own company’s reputation for being professional and good at what you do.

This final C, creativity, is often the most difficult to achieve. There are a lot of good writers out there, and a lot of successful marketing agencies. Plus, there’s not much new under the sun. We just used a really old cliche (dating back thousands of years to an ancient proverb) to prove our point. So if you can’t reinvent the wheel (there, we did it again)—how do you write creative content without ripping off someone else by copying their great idea?

Be you. Find your voice and use it. A tone and writing style (diction and syntax) that is unique to your brand is a huge first step to making your content creative, because it will sound like you and nobody else.

Next, make the content interesting! If it’s not fun for you to read, it’s probably not fun for anyone else to read. If you’re interested in what you’re writing, others will be more interested in what they’re reading.

Calls to Action Can Look Different for Different People

This blog may have inspired you to do some digging into what qualifies as a credible source. Or, maybe this blog will have your in-house writers focusing on cutting copy so their content is less wordy and more concise. You might simply start thinking about ways to improve your value proposition and tell a stronger story about who you are as a company.

But here’s how those look: If you need help generating compelling content for any of your marketing needs, contact Liquid Creative today. Our talented team of writers are here to help grow your business!

We spend time with each individual client, getting to know them, their company, and their product. But we also spend time listening to them, learning their voice, hearing their vision, mission, and values. That way, we can write for different clients in the same industry—even on the same topics—and the content sounds different for each client.

We don’t want to sound like us; we work hard to sound like you.

Liquid Creative is well aware of the recent increase in phishing scams from devious people impersonating Facebook and Meta. We’ve received these emails ourselves‚ in our Liquid accounts and the multiple accounts we manage for clients. Sadly, some of our clients and loved ones have been fooled by these tricks. Thankfully, we’ve been able to recover most of the accounts. Sometimes, it’s just not possible.

What are Facebook phishing scams?

Phishing is a common internet crime, where a scammer impersonates a company, government agency, or even a person you know, and tricks their victims into sharing personal information like the login information to their accounts. Then the scammer proceeds to take control of those accounts for their own benefit.

Facebook phishing scams usually show up in one (or all) of these three ways: as a direct message through Facebook or Instagram (Messenger), as an email, or as an SMS text message. In all cases, the sender often impersonates Meta, Facebook, or Instagram.

Common phishing scams targeting Business Pages

The following isn’t an exhaustive list of phishing scams that target Business Pages, but it gives you a good idea of what to watch out for:

Facebook will never ask you for your password in an email or send you a password as an attachment.

• Claims that your page has gone against Meta’s community standards, and that your account will be blocked if you don’t act.
• Claims that your page has violated copyright laws, and that you will be sued if you don’t act.
• Warnings that your account has been compromised or hacked, and that you need to log in to recover it.
• Questions about a product or service with a fake link, or a request that you download a file (that’s infected).

 

Common phishing scams targeting Personal Profiles

Since your personal profile is tied to your business page, scammers only need to gain access to your personal account (or any admin’s on your business page) to be able to access your business account. To do this, scammers often use these types of techniques that target personal profiles:

• Impersonating someone you know
• Friend requests
• Contests and giveaways
• Job offers
• Surveys
• Games and quizzes

Click on these scams, and you’ll likely land on a website that looks like a Facebook page (or actually is a Facebook page), but is a fake one created to impersonate an official Meta account. In each of these scenarios, the scammer requests some kind of access and then uses it to take control of your account and lock you out.

 

What happens after my account has been hacked?

One of the worst things that can happen when your account gets hacked is this: Scammers then use your Ad Account to run ads for their own products and services using your credit card.

They can also impersonate your account and reach out to people or companies you know and scam your colleagues too!

Just losing access to a business account that represents your brand and that you’ve probably worked hard to build is bad enough, but it’s not the worst of it.
 

 

Is this message from Facebook legit? Examples of different phishing messages and how to recognize them

Example of a “Meta email” phishing scam

This email received by one of our clients is a good example of a phishing scam where the sender pretends to be the company Meta. The email “From” line claims the email was sent from the Meta Help Center, but if you look at the accompanying address, the email is actually from zadhu.com.
The email includes the actual name of the business page on the subject line and in the content. It claims you violated community standards and copyright laws. Then it warns that if you don’t act within 24 hours, your account will be deactivated.

It includes a link to a Facebook page. The link will take users to a fake Facebook page that impersonates Meta. From there, they’ll ask you to give them enough information to take control of your account.

 

 

Examples of direct message phishing scam

Similar to the email above, you can get a direct message via your phone app or on your computer. In this case, the message will be from a user that claims to be Facebook or Meta. They will probably use Facebook’s logo and/or some kind of warning sign.

You may also receive a message from someone impersonating a user who pretends to be interested in your products or services. But, they will send you a link or a downloadable file.

Example of an SMS message phishing scam

Similar to the examples above, you may get a text message with the same modus operandi. You’ll start to notice the pattern, and you’ll be ready to ignore, block, delete, or report!

How to detect a phishing email or message

Here are some of the most common warning signs:

• Email is not from a Facebook or Meta domain. Facebook uses the following emails when reaching out to users: @facebookmail.com, @facebook.com, @fb.com, and @meta.com.
• Typos, grammatical errors, unusual fonts, or excess of emojis ⚠️ 🚫 🚩
• User’s name or avatar is not from Facebook or Meta.
• Design doesn’t look like it comes from Facebook or Meta.
• Time-sensitive requests (e.g., “Do such and such, or you will be suspended in 24 hours.”).
• Links you have to click to solve the stated problem.

Please consider that scammers are becoming increasingly effective at impersonating official messages, so always take extra precaution.
 

 

What to do if you suspect you’ve received a scam email or message

Our recommendation is to NEVER click on an email or message from Facebook. If you wonder if the email or message is legitimate, you can log into your personal profile, your business page, or your business manager account directly and make sure everything looks good. If there is a problem with your account, you’ll probably see an official warning message from Facebook in the account itself—not via a text, direct message, or email.

If you are sure it’s a scam, you can:

• Delete or ignore the message.
• Mark it as spam.
  Example of how to mark an email as spam in Gmail:
  

  Example of how to mark a direct message as spam in Meta:

  
• You can take the extra step and report it to Meta. You can do that by forwarding it to ph***@**.com, or you can report it on this page.

 

 

What can I do if I fall for a Facebook phishing scam?

If you or someone you know already fell for a phishing scam, the most important step you can take is to contact Facebook and tell them. Follow the instructions on this page or through Facebook’s chat support (you need to still be able to access your personal profile and be logged in to do this).

If you are not sure if your account was compromised, you can reach out to this Facebook page.

If you have a credit card attached to your Ad Account, contact your bank and cancel your cards.

If you have a credit card attached to your Ad Account, contact your bank and cancel your cards. Also verify whether or not the cards were used for any unauthorized purchases. If the cards have already been used, you will need to file an appeal with your banking or credit card company. If they haven’t been used yet, still cancel them and get new cards.

Take all kinds of screenshots that can be used as proof—for your financial service, your own company records, and Meta. This includes emails, direct messages, and any kind of actual warning you’ve received from Meta once your account was hacked.

If you have questions, we have answers. You’ve got business objectives. We’ve got marketing solutions. Contact Liquid Creative today.